Those of you who have known me for a long time you will already know how important music has been in my life. When I was growing up it was an escape from the torment I felt inside me, a way of closing my mind to the fact that I felt trapped inside a body which just somehow didn’t fit but I had no idea how to deal with it. My taste in music has changed little through the years in terms of style and content, just moved with the times and updated as the years have gone by but when I have a favourite artist I listen to him, Her or them almost until I am sick of hearing them. Just occasionally I come across something which for what ever reason blows me away and I listen to very little else for a good long time. Chris Rea is a good example of this, for many years starting in the mid eighties I listened to his music, went to numerous of his concerts and still to this day enjoy much of it. From there my tastes have tended to be single female artists like Suzanne Vega, Joan Armatrading, Christina Perri and Adele but then about a year ago we decided after visiting a friend’s house to have the basic Foxtel satellite tv package which includes Foxtel smooth which is non stop music video and most of it is easy listening and much of it from the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s when there was some really good music around.
About three months ago I was at home watching smooth and a video came on which caught my eye for some reason, I didn’t see the beginning so wasn’t sure who was singing it but at the end made sure I watched for the name of the artist to come up, it was Darren Hayes, it didn’t mean anything to me at the time but the next time it came on and I thought yes I do like this I did some research which led me to Savage Garden of which Darren was one half along with Daniel Jones. Soon after that we left for Philadelphia and had no further access to smooth so forgot about it for a while but one week after my surgery after being taught how to dilate I needed something to take my mind off the pain I was getting dilating, I started to use YouTube on my phone as a distraction and Darren became the first place to start. This particular track is called Insatiable, It’s a great tune and excellent video but if you don’t choose another track when it has finished YouTube picks one for you, usually the same artist or part thereof, well this particular day after several Darren Hayes tracks all of which I liked there came some Savage Garden tracks, all the well known ones at first, Truely, Madly, Deeply, then To the moon and back then I knew I loved you then some lesser known tracks which I didn’t know. After some time one of their hits came on called Affirmation, I had heard this before but not really taken any notice of the lyrics but something made me prick up my ears, it mentioned Parents doing the best they knew how to do and for the next few times this came on I muttered to myself “that’s a matter of opinion” but the more I played it the more it made sense to me. I started playing Affirmation first and listening to the lyrics really hard, it’s quite a quick song and so you really have to listen hard but the more you listen the more the whole thing makes sense in fact there is not a line in the song which doesn’t make sense and then somehow it clicked in my head and in that moment more was done to sort the issues trapped inside my head than 12 visits to the psychologist have done. At this point I haven’t yet forgiven my parents for not telling me I was born intersex but somehow I have come to accept that they did indeed handle it the best way they could and as much as I disagree with how it was handled I have now accepted the fact that they felt what they did was the best thing at the time and that acceptance has lifted a huge weight from me and I now feel so much better for it. It’s quite ironic that the band Savage Garden was Australian as I don’t think I would be in the happy place I am now if I hadn’t emigrated to Australia, I have had so much good luck in finding the right people who cared enough about me to point me in the right direction and put me in touch with the right people and I certainly would not have been where I am if not for my beautiful partner and best friend Denise whom I would not have met if I hadn’t been in Busselton.